Like Trump, Israeli Prime Minister has used being the leader of his country to avoid facing trial. And jail. Also like Trump he spent years prior to the October 7 terrorist attack from Hamas gaming his country’s legal system. Some have alleged he allowed the attack to happen because it would benefit him politically. That’s a long discussion but what matters right now is Israel has an election of its own coming up in the next month and Netanyahu’s Party might not win enough seats to keep him in the Prime Minister’s job. He’s used the Oct. 7 attack and resulting war in the Gaza Strip to retain power, but fresh allegations have been reported in Israel that, contrary to his claims Netanyahu WAS warned and failed to take appropriate measures to prevent the slaughter Hamas unleashed that awful day.
It’s been years now, but long ago reports surfaced a copy of Hamas’ plan had been obtained by Israeli intelligence. It was reported an Israeli Intelligence officer had passed up the plan so that the country could prepare to counter it. A year before the attack. Given the complexity it would take time for Hamas to implement it so according to those news reports, they had an even better chance than we did with the 9/11 attacks to prevent it. Netanyahu said no one told him a thing, and his then intelligence chief backed him up.
Still, for a couple of weeks prior to the attack members of the IDF (they have a base very close to where Hamas came through from Gaza) and some of their intelligence folks could literally see some ‘rehearsals’ of the impending attack including those paragliders making passes near the fence that separated Israel proper from Gaza. Again, that plan obtained a year prior was dusted off and it was reported a second warning had been passed up to Netanyahu. Which he also denied. What he DID do was transfer a substantial number of troops from that base to deal with ‘trouble’ in the other Palestinian section of Israel which of course crippled the initial response to the attack from Gaza. But again, Netanyahu did his Sgt. Schultz (for those of us who remember Hogan’s Heroes) “I know (knew) nothing!” routine.
Eventually Netanyahu and his supporters pretty much quelled the accusation there was credible warning for the attack which almost perfectly matched what was laid out in that plan Israeli intelligence obtained a year before it happened. And Netanyahu played being the leader of a country at war against a vicious enemy (and Hamas is as awful as Netanyahu has always said which begs the question of why he gave them billions over the years) to great advantage. However, just as an increasing number of people in this country who supported or only tolerated Trump have grown weary of him, the same has happened in Israel with Netanyahu. He and his Party are in real political trouble regarding the upcoming election.
The last thing he needs is the accusation he knew the Oct. 7 attack was coming resurfacing. However according to the Washington Post multiple entities have said they passed along warnings. This I should add is in addition to what Netanyahu’s own intelligence service had reported years ago:
JERUSALEM — A slew of reports that Arab officials warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a serious threat emerging from Gaza days before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas have put the longtime Israeli leader on the defensive less than 30 days before a pivotal election.
Ever since the attack, the most deadly in Israel’s history, Netanyahu has argued that Israeli security chiefs collectively failed to foresee the surprise attack by Hamas — but that he led the fightback, scoring redemptive battlefield victories in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
But that narrative is fraying as reports of the advance warnings, including one delivered by United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, train a spotlight on Netanyahu’s handling of the attack and his refusal to allow an independent commission to investigate it.
Netanyahu denies it. He even parrots Trump using the term ‘Fake News!’ According to Bibi and his supporters this is all a last minute smear from left wing Israeli politicians. Oh, and journalists and ‘overseas interests’ too. Sound familiar? Trump has his own problems but you can count on him making these same claims when he gets hit with news he doesn’t want people to know. It seems Netanyahu has borrowed Trump’s playbook. However as I said the timing is pretty bad for him. It’s the Israeli version of what we call an ‘October Surprise’ only over there it’s a September Surprise:
The disclosures began to trickle out in early September, when the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an excerpt from “Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment,” a book by two Israeli journalists that details an encrypted call reportedly made by the Emirati president, who is known as MBZ, less than two weeks before Oct. 7, 2023, to warn Netanyahu that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a major operation that could destabilize the Middle East. Netanyahu did not pass on the warnings to his security aides, according to the book authors, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval.
“We have excellent proof and many more scoops in the book,” Eldar said. “It’s rock solid.” The UAE Foreign Ministry did not deny the Haaretz excerpt, saying, “When necessary, all relevant intelligence has been and continues to be communicated between the relevant entities.”
It’s a substantial article that will take five minutes or more to read but I urge you to do so before it goes behind the WaPo paywall. I should point out it notes that the UAE isn’t the only country to have forwarded a warning directly to Netanyahu:
In recent days, the debate in Israel has reached a fever pitch after The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal published reports that then-Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel also warned Netanyahu about Gaza in the days before Oct. 7.
On Sunday, Netanyahu flew to Abu Dhabi and requested that MBZ explicitly deny that a warning call about Oct. 7 took place in late 2023, said a person with knowledge of the meeting who, like others quoted in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
I included that last section because while the Israeli government denies that was the purpose of the trip it’s a credible allegation. As the linked article details since relations between Israel and the UAE normalized to a large extent after the Abraham Accords and the latter has been notably positive towards Israel:
The Emirates’ refusal to disavow the reports of advance warnings is particularly striking because it is the Arab country that has stood closest to Netanyahu over the past three years even as his international standing plummeted.
Since signing the Abraham Accords that normalized diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020, the UAE has often been more measured in its criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank than some other Arab countries that have accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
As Israel’s actions in Gaza have played out the UAE is in an awkward position. It has to maintain other and longer relations with other (Muslim) countries in the region. That has them trying to play a non-committal line regarding all this, which in itself is telling. They could after all come out and flatly back Netanyahu but instead are indicating that yes, they tried to warn him and he blew them off. The question is whether this will bring Netanyahu down, or will he somehow be able to turn the tables to again rally support:
The WaPo does point out that just as so many Trump supporters rallied around him even harder as more information Jack Smith’s investigation revealed. In a similar fashion Netanyahu’s supporters dig in deeper with every allegation against him no matter the evidence before them:
Jonathan Rynhold, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, said Netanyahu may be hobbled by the claims about the warnings, but his loyal base and Israel’s predominantly right-leaning voters may not jump ship for the centrist bloc led by Eisenkot without a “clear smoking gun.”
Apparently Israel has its own version of MAGA! Not a comforting thought but how else to explain how Netanyahu is still in power? He was on the verge of falling when he tried to take away the power of the Israeli courts. The public outrage was such he had to back down, and then the Oct. 7 terrorist attack happened. It doesn’t take being a wearer of a tinfoil hat to wonder if Bib was willing to sacrifice all those people just to stay in power. Think about it. Here, Trump was so worried about re-election he let Covid get out of control knowing it would cost (he thought) over a hundred thousand lives. It was of course far more but the point is that even in a country with democratically elected leaders a leader can come along who will do anything including sacrifice countless lives to stay in power. I invoked Trump and Covid, but if you’re old enough you remember all the deaths in Vietnam Nixon was willing than entertain leaving long before we did.
One last note about warnings and the credibility of the current allegations. In early 2024, several months after the Oct. attack MBZ told then-CIA Director William J. Burns he’d warned Netanyahu about the possibility of violence erupting. For me at least that corroborates what’s being reported in Israel now. We will have to wait a bit to see whether the furor that’s erupted leads to Netanyahu’s Likud Party losing so many seats that he can’t put together a coalition to keep him in power. I for one hope he loses his position and since unlike the immunity our own SCOTUS has given to Trump, Netanyahu has to (finally!) face the numerous charges against him in court.
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise, among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
